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Class, Sex and Politics in Online Nigerian and Kenyan Poetry

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Class, Sex and Politics in Online Nigerian and Kenyan Poetry Postcolonial Text, Vol 11, No 1 (2016) New Voices, New Media: Class, Sex and Politics in Online Nigerian and Kenyan Poetry Shola Adenekan Universitat Bremen “The rise of a genre,” argues David Craig (1975: 160), “is likely to occur with the rise of a class.” Craig’s statement is germane not only because each social class often tries to define itself by devising and utilizing arts that truly capture the very essence of its existence, but also because various elements of day-to-day experiences are often portrayed through the prism of one’s own class. Class-consciousness is not alien to many African societies. Class also intersects economic and cultural strata and no one epitomizes this phenomenon more than the artist, who derives his artistic licence from the fact that he occupies the middle layers of his society. This trend continues today. The way social critique in a digital age is expressed in poetry through a middle- class worldview, by people who are often seen as spokespersons for contemporary Nigeria and Kenya, is the focus of this essay. Cyberspace is a convergence of political and literary power, and writers and politicians are very active in this space populated mainly by the educated middle classes. Not long ago, Terry Harpold (1999) predicted that Africa will epitomize the heart of digital darkness. Harpold uses Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899/1902) in pointing out the futility of imagining an African digital age. He surmises that no studies or data available at the time can “account for the extreme local obstacles which must be overcome before anything like a viable African internet is possible” (22). Two decades or so later, not only does Africa have more mobile phone users than Europe but internet usage on the continent is also growing rapidly. The past decade has also seen a boom in online-based communities, websites, and social media pages that target Africans at home and overseas. Leading politicians in both Kenya and Nigeria target online readers as potential voters on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. The Nigerian and Kenyan presidents for example, maintain active social media presence, with millions of followers. Governors and legislators in these two countries are also active on Facebook. Poets often try to speak truth to power, while politicians use this space daily to communicate with the same audience that poetry is targeting. Readers are equally likely to be educated and actively follow politics and popular culture, in addition to partaking in historical and cultural events. Such poets and their readers can therefore be regarded as people who possess cultural capital. Thus class intersects with the poetic and the political in a digital age. Furthermore, for many emerging poets from Kenya and Nigeria, cyberspace is not exclusive to the book, or a physical space’s oral performance, as they use these media in a way that suggests orature. The print platform and cyberspace complement one another, and they are both germane to African literature in a new age. For example, poetry posted on Facebook may be performed for members of the public in the real space of Lagos and Nairobi, and the recording of those performances may be posted on YouTube and Facebook for consumption by the online public. Young poets such as David Ishaya Osu (Nigeria), Dami Ajayi (Nigeria), and Redscar McOdindo K’Oyuga (Kenya) publish poems almost every week on Facebook, many of which later form part of print collections. These works may also appear as part of a collection of a creative book project. These processes arguably involve reshaping the text for different formats, and through this process the creative piece is unfixed and susceptible to changes. These textual movements across spoken words, the print medium, and cyberspace speak to the malleability of texts, and also to the transnational middle-class lifestyle—and upbringing—of several members of a new generation of African voices. Using history as a starting-point, this paper will argue that our understanding of class has for a long time been influenced by a Euro- modern concept of social status, which sees class as an idea that emerged totally from Europe and its modernity and that class can only be comprehended by framing arguments through this perspective. It will argue that ideas of social status are also part of history in non- western societies such as Nigeria and Kenya. In carrying out these analyses, I will argue that these online poems are organised around not just the present but also the robust interpretation of the past. This is because new media technologies give writers new avenues to shape, recreate, possess, re-live, experience, and remember forgotten old cultural practices and create new contemporary cultural values. Cyberspace as the New Medium for Nigerian and Kenyan Poetry Many of the new voices from Kenya and Nigeria are not posting their works on cyberspace just for the sake of it; it is because communities—both local and global—are emerging from this space. In addition, these communities are populated mostly by people who can be described as middle-class. A report by the African Development Bank (2011) says internet usage is a signifier of a middle-class lifestyle in Africa and the study uses internet penetration as one of its main markers for analysing the social classes on the continent. Another survey by internetworldstats.com suggests that as of May 2015, there are about thirty million Kenyans online out of a total population of fifty million people, and the Nigerian Communications Commission estimates that as of August 2015, there are over a hundred million Nigerians who have internet-enabled devices. The majority of the people living in both countries, therefore, have access to cyberspace. 2 Postcolonial Text Vol 11, No 1 (2016) Across the African continent, a study by Grail Research (2013) suggests that the rise in internet consumption is driven mainly by Africa’s growing middle class. I have previously (2012) traced the history of the internetting of Nigerian and Kenyan literature to the mid-to-late 1990s, when many young African writers, wanting to escape the politics of book publishing, began to publish poetry, short stories, and essays on African listservs, personal blogs, and creative writing websites. The demand for African short stories and poems began to grow a decade or so later as international publications such as the New Yorker and Guernica started to publish the works of some notable emerging African voices. In addition, some of the new voices came together to start their own publications, which include Kwani?, Africanwriters.com, Chimurenga, Brittle Paper, Saraba and the Thenewblackmagazine.com. Poets and short story writers also have their own blogs where they post works in progress; these include Gukira, Koroga and TolulopeWrites. At this moment, there are dozens of poetry and creative writing communities online; many of these poets and writers maintain an active social media presence and there are hundreds of online groups in which poets, writers, and other creative artists mingle everyday with their followers. And since texts tend to move to where the audience is, it is, therefore, no surprise that an increasing amount of creative writing—mostly poetry, short stories, plays, and essays—is finding a home in this new media. Literature is one of the main elements that unite members of these online communities and writers are often seen as the guiding lights of these communities. For example, Pius Adesanmi and Tolu Ogunlesi (Nigeria) have thousands of followers on Facebook and Twitter, as do Binyavanga Wainaina and Shailja Patel (Kenya). Publishers are also addressing this new digital trend and Donna Bryson (9 May 2013) argues that “[p]ublishers across the [African] continent are increasingly targeting readers with mobile phone apps and other technologies that are far cheaper than either e-readers or traditional books.” These digital entities to which Bryson refers are made up of Africans who are using mobile phones and computers for their creating writing, while their readers often use these digital tools to access, share, and comment on creative texts. Some poems speak to cultural heritage as well as contributing to the online processes of collective memory productions (subversive and conventional), place- making activities, and identity construction. It is these historical evocations and the production of new materialities that inform this essay. These middle-class poets are mainly people with a good knowledge of the English language, who also possess the resources to have internet access as well as the technical know-how to post creative writing online. Olu Oguibe is a leading poet, artist, and writer; born, raised, and educated in Nigeria, he recognises the privileged nature of African arts in the digital age, especially its connection to the 3 Postcolonial Text Vol 11, No 1 (2016) professional middle classes. In an essay, “Connectivity, and the Fate of the Unconnected” (7 December 1999), he argues: In time, however, we have come to acknowledge that the requisites of entry into this network involve a little more than simply connecting. Many now recognize that connectivity carries with it a string of conditionalities, and in order to connect, the average individual must meet these conditionalities most of which many are ill disposed to fulfil. (http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/6/6551/1.html) Oguibe’s argument reflects the condition of African literature written in European languages. The poets, novelists, critics, and consumers of these works are people with the language capability to enjoy them. They can afford fast and reliable internet, are often based in metropolitan centres of Africa, Europe, and America, and some even spend much of their time in these places.
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